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50 free North America trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
48 free North America trivia questions with answers. North America runs from Kaffeklubben Island, the northernmost land on Earth, to the roadless jungle of the Darién Gap, and this quiz covers the whole continent rather than just the United States. There are questions on the big geography (Denali, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and Missouri, Death Valley, the Bering Strait), on Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Central America and the Caribbean, and on the history that shaped the map: the Norse in Vinland, Cortés and the Aztecs, Jamestown and Quebec, the Louisiana Purchase, the Alaska sale and the Panama Canal. Easy questions ask which explorer the Americas are named after and which country Greenland belongs to. The hard ones want the lake the Panama Canal locks lift ships into, the island Canada and Denmark argued over for fifty years, the volcano under Crater Lake and what a 1553 map called the continent. It suits a geography classroom, a pub-quiz round or anyone planning a road trip that crosses a border. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the continent, its countries and its landmarks, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01North America is the third-largest continent by area. Which two are bigger?
Asia and Africa
It covers about 24.7 million square kilometres, roughly 16.5 percent of Earth's land.
Q 02The Americas were named after which explorer?
Amerigo Vespucci
German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller put 'America' on a 1507 map, initially only on what is now South America.
Q 03On a 1553 map, North America was labelled 'Baccalearum', meaning realm of which fish?
Cod
The name nodded to the huge cod stocks off the East Coast that drew European fishing fleets to Newfoundland.
Q 04What is the highest peak in North America?
Denali
Its 20,310-foot summit rises about 18,000 feet above the surrounding plateau, one of the greatest vertical reliefs on Earth.
Q 05In 1896 a gold prospector renamed North America's highest peak after which presidential candidate?
William McKinley
The Koyukon people had used the mountain's traditional name for centuries; the federal government used the McKinley name from 1917 until 2015, when the Interior Department restored the original.
Q 06Which body of water is the largest indentation into the North American coastline?
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson Bay comes second, and it is politically entirely part of a single Canadian territory despite touching four provinces.
Q 07Which is the world's largest freshwater lake by surface area?
Superior
The Ojibwe name gichi-gami, 'great sea', became Longfellow's 'Gitche Gumee' and later a line in Gordon Lightfoot's shipwreck ballad.
Q 08Which two Great Lakes are hydrologically one body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac?
Michigan and Huron
Measured together, the pair rivals the northernmost Great Lake as the largest freshwater lake on the planet by surface area.
Q 09Roughly what share of the world's surface fresh water do the Great Lakes hold?
20%
Their combined volume is only slightly less than that of Siberia's Lake Baikal.
Q 10The Mississippi River rises in which Minnesota lake?
Itasca
From there it flows about 2,340 miles to the Gulf, draining all or part of 32 states and two Canadian provinces.
Q 11Which river is longer than the Mississippi, making it the longest in the United States?
Missouri
The Mississippi is still North America's largest river by discharge, ranking tenth in the world.
Q 12The Rio Grande, which forms much of the US-Mexico border, is known by what name in Mexico?
Río Bravo
It rises in south-central Colorado and runs 1,896 miles to the Gulf.
Q 13What is the highest air temperature ever officially recorded on Earth, set at Furnace Creek?
134 °F
The July 1913 reading of 134 °F is disputed by some meteorologists; the highest undisputed figure there is 130 °F, set in 2020 and 2021.
Q 21Which Spanish explorer named La Florida in 1513?
Juan Ponce de León
He had sailed with Columbus on the second voyage.
Q 22The Norse sagas refer to a part of North America by what name?
Vinland
The Newfoundland site at L'Anse aux Meadows provides clear evidence of Norse settlement around 1000 CE.
Q 23Which Norse explorer is thought to be the first European to land on mainland North America?
Leif Erikson
The verified settlement site is at the northern tip of Newfoundland.
Q 14Greenland is the world's largest island. Which kingdom is it an autonomous territory of?
Denmark
Greenlanders are EU citizens even though Greenland itself is not part of the EU.
Q 15Greenland shares a 1.2-kilometre land border with Canada on which tiny island, disputed until 2022?
Hans
The two countries settled the 'Whisky War' by splitting the island down the middle.
Q 16What is the capital of Greenland?
Nuuk
Kaffeklubben Island off the northern coast is the world's northernmost undisputed point of land.
Q 17What is Canada's newest territory, carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1999 for Inuit self-government?
Nunavut
It was the first major change to Canada's map since Newfoundland joined in 1949, and its capital Iqaluit is Canada's smallest.
Q 18Which is North America's most populous metropolis?
Mexico City
Mexico City and New York are the only cities on the continent above eight million people.
Q 19The Mexican capital sits at roughly what altitude?
2,240 m
It was built on the site of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in the Valley of Mexico.
Q 20The Aztec Empire, whose capital was Tenochtitlan, was conquered in 1521 by which Spaniard?
Hernán Cortés
He had sailed west from Cuba in 1519 and relied heavily on local indigenous allies.
Q 24What was the first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in 1607?
Jamestown
The first permanent French settlement followed a year later, upriver on the St. Lawrence.
Q 25The first permanent French settlement in North America was founded in 1608 where?
Quebec City
French remains the official language of Quebec, where about 95 percent of people speak it as a first or second language.
Q 26Which leader sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Thomas Jefferson was president; the deal covered lands west of the Mississippi.
Q 27From which country did the United States buy Alaska in 1867?
Russia
The same year, the colonies north of the US unified as the Dominion of Canada.
Q 28Panama separated from which country in 1903, with US backing, clearing the way for the canal?
Colombia
The canal opened in 1914 and the US kept the Canal Zone until the handover process began under the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties.
Q 29Which country began building the Panama Canal in 1881 before abandoning the effort in 1889?
France
Engineering problems and a horrific worker death rate destroyed investor confidence; the US took over in 1904.
Q 30The Panama Canal's locks lift ships 26 metres up to which artificial body of water?
Gatun Lake
It was created by damming the Chagres River and was for decades the largest man-made lake in the world.